Ooh Okay So Ive Been Thinking, And Hear Me Out. I Know Spike Has Adapted And Become Pretty Thoroughly

Ooh okay so I’ve been thinking, and hear me out. I know Spike has adapted and become pretty thoroughly modern and Punk Rock and all that, but never forget that, as a human, he was a Victorian gentleman. So, I like to imagine that every once in a while, he does these random little Victorian things, like sending Buffy a truly weird Christmas card like one of the above or wanting to tell a spooky Christmas Eve ghost story. 

Granted, in life, proper little aspiring Romantic Poet* William said he didn’t like to discuss “dark, ugly business”^ such as the “rash of disappearances” that had been going around town (spoiler alert: the ones caused by the vampires that were soon to turn him, but I digress) so maybe that suggests he wasn’t the biggest fan of the Christmas Eve ghost story before his turning--although it’s also possible he simply wasn’t big on true crime (nor the people telling it, since they often made fun of his poetry) but he was still down for a spooky story enchantingly spun on a dark night by the fireplace; I know we don’t get a ton of pre-turn William--but either way, after becoming a vampire and thus becoming into Dark, Edgy Things, I’m convinced he would have loved a scary Christmas Eve ghost story, and I like to imagine he carried that forward with him even after getting into the Ramones and Nirvana and hair dye. And whatever Passions is; I should really look that up. Huh, I guess it’s basically just a soap opera. But in any case, we know the guy likes to tell a good spooky story, like that time when Dawn comes to visit him and he’s regaling her with his own gruesome exploits, so we know he has a talent for suspenseful tale-telling. Even after getting his soul back, I don’t think that storyteller aspect of him goes away (although he probably prefers fictional stories to his personal history now). 

So, one year, Buffy gets a Christmas card with an illustration of Santa stuffing a kid into his sack or frogs falling on ice, and on the back there’s an invitation to Christmas Eve ghost stories in Spike’s crypt (does he move back into a crypt? I’m just into season 7 now and he’s living at Xander’s at the moment but I do still picture him in his crypt) and anyways I miiight have to write this fic now if I can get around to it. As much as I love punk rock Spike, I still want him to be a little Victorian sometimes :)  

*I know he’s technically from after the Romantic Era proper--he was born shortly after it ended if you take Wikipedia’s end date of 1850 and consider that he was I think 26 when he was turned in 1880 (which is firmly in the Victorian era)--but I still feel like Romantic Poet is what he was aspiring to be.

^I looked up a transcript for the quotes; thanks go to this site

P.S. Along these lines, I’ve also been thinking about whether Spike would go Christmas Caroling. I do very much doubt that soulless vampire Spike ever would, but I’m fairly confident that pre-turn William would do it happily; so, my question is, would now-reensouled Spike be willing to go caroling, or would he still be too Edgy? These are the real questions about Buffy’s soul lore we should be asking, haha. 

Victorian Christmas cards were bonkers

Consider: Spike, Buffy, and Angel having a romantic picnic by the beach at night and stargazing together. They may not be able to go picnicking in the daylight, but the night has charms of its own.

Also consider Angel and Spike getting competitive over who can name more constellations and who tells the stories that go with them better, haha :) 

Image sources: x x x+x;  x;  x x x 

How precious it is to lightly hold my cat's paw and feel her gently squeeze back <3

I played the entire Danger Days album tonight while finishing up my taxes, and just as I stapled them together, the anthem in Goodnight Dr. D hit the staticky part. It felt... poetic. 

Ooo I love this idea!

Although I could also see Ghoul really enjoying a kick wheel too, because there's just something so delightfully tactile about giving big leg-flopping kicks against a large metal disk to make your pottery spin... I always found it more satisfying than the electric wheels so maybe I'm just projecting, but I feel like Ghoul would also vibe with the sensation of using kick wheels.

Ooh, and also, if they couldn't make it out to the kiln sometimes, they could always try a pit firing! It would be a good excuse for a nice big bonfire with the crew, and then the pottery would have a cool, smokey look to it, even unglazed (I think?)--like this:

(Image source) [Image ID: a short stout clay pot with an almost watercolor-esque swirling and speckled pattern of rust, dark silver, smokey grey, and maroon splotches on its surface resulting from a pit firing. End ID]

Of course, the bonfire might risk drawing the attention of Dracs, but then again we know they do canonically have fires at night sometimes... Ooh I just decided my new headcanon for the campfire scene in Na Na Na is now that they were doing a pit firing! (Or you could always just pit fire during the day when it would be less obvious, but I’m just enjoying the thought of this.)

Anyways. Fun Ghoul does pottery. There’s a wheel in the diner, and they got it to operate off battery power, and they drag Kobra out on clay-finding missions, since he’s got such a skill for finding water. They make all their own tools for it, and stuff is mostly unglazed. There’s a working kiln at a studio in Zone Two, and every other month they load up the Am with one of the others and drive out to it.

They’ll make functional pieces whenever someone breaks a few too many plates by mistake, or clay shells for certain kinds of bombs, but mostly they make abstract, rarely-useful pieces, all warped and twisting, halfway between sculpture and dream. Sometimes they handbuild pieces on after throwing it on the wheel.

So, the snow live wallpaper I've been using on my phone kept crashing on me, and I figured it was time for a new phone background. As luck would have it, I’d seen this beautiful comic illustration earlier that same day, and I thought it would make a perfect screensaver for my phone!

I messed with the tint, warmth, and saturation a bit to give it a purplish cast in order to make it match my personal color palette, and then I screenshotted it so it would match the dimensions of my phone screen, and behold, my new wallpaper:

[Image IDs: A comic book drawing with Buffy in the foreground, wearing a cute dress that is white on top with purple flowers along the shoulder and side, short, ruffled sleeves, and a light blue skirt, raising her signature Slayer ‘scythe’ as she takes a semi-crouched action pose. Her hair is partially braided in two segments on the sides and tied back in a loose bun, and her expression is determined. Behind Buffy, Spike is leaping dramatically in the direction opposite from the one she is facing, though his eyes seem to cast back towards her. His signature long black leather coat sweeps out behind him and a stake is clutched in his right hand. He has a similarly fierce look on his face, although it is not his ‘vamp face’, but his cheekbones are sharp as ever. In the background, there’s a stack of three wooden crates, a brick wall, and a string of red paper lanterns with tassels hanging down from them. The second image is the same as the first but is tinted to be a bright pinkish-purplish tone and it has black bars added at the top and bottom. End ID]

I’m quite fond of my new wallpaper! I’m still just reading Season 8 and so I haven’t reached where Spike shows up quite yet, but I’m very much looking forward to it; from a few panels I’ve seen, it looks like it’s going to be really cute. Anyways, having this as my phone screensaver has been making me smile whenever I open it. It’s a very cute and dynamic Spuffy art piece! Feel free to use my screensaver edit on your own phone if you’d like.

By the way, if anyone wants to take my image ID without the part about my screensaver edit and put it on just the first post, that would be totally fine, though I’d happily appreciate credit. Thanks! 

I put a couple more variations of my edits to this picture below the cut:

In case your phone has a different aspect ratio than mine (it’s a Pixel 3), I’ll stick the original edit here so you can screenshot or crop it however your phone requires. (It’s just the above tinted image but without the bars that make it fit my screen’s height.)

Oh, and also here’s a much less dramatically tinted version that I made first before I decided to tint it more, if anyone would like to use that: 

Variant cover for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 10 #9, by Rebekah Isaacs